You don’t need to release your leftovers, but Model/Actriz did, and Swan Songs – assembled in the aftermath of second album Pirouette’s production – captures a feeling far more eye-opening than many bands during the cocaine-driven high of album-making.
The feeling is the knot-in-chest where culmination is confused with a crossroads. The Boston four-piece released Swan Songs not to say goodbye, but to abstractly address the convolution of finality with their own series of Pollocks. Their Pollocks have words and structure, btw, also humour and great queerness.
In my own, personal opinion, it doesn’t get much more humorous than releasing a song entitled “Thank You by Dido” that isn’t actually a cover of Thank You by Dido. The song references the Dido hit’s playing on the radio; the centrepiece of the crossroads; the heart of the sort of story unusual for an EP of ‘secondary’ songs.
Glassman is contented; its narrator closes its eyes, floats and lounges in a void, a sea of tranquility, and nobody is with them except whomever they want. Thank You by Dido parts with that same person. Majesty returns to that same spot, that same sea of tranquility, alone.
These chapters feels like heavy heart palpitations; dancing, sweating, gasping and heaving initially, unaware of any ensuing end or uncertainty, arriving at a border, unclear what is on the other side.
Ruben Radlauer’s beats continue their sad, breathless dance as the venue is hacked by sudden bollards of electronic dissonance, overdriven with gain, like an intrusive hand clutching our shoulders and waists as we try to keep up with the dance ourselves.
Cole Haden’s penchant for balladry is unlike anybody else’s, commanding upswings in noise and crescendo no matter the instrumentation, singing with tears as if something horribly biblical approaches, gangly-voiced even in deep breath, eternally haunting.
The pulse of the EP is industrial rock, still somewhere on the noise spectrum due to its sonic hostilities. It is a kitchen sink approach to closure and the visualisation of. Seth Manchester’s co-production stops and restarts hearts.
Best tracks – Glassman – Thank You by Dido.
Rating – 7.5 out of 10
